Posted May 23, 2008    

• Cristie Kerr

• Bud Selig

• Brad Childress

• Mike Modano

• Tubby Smith

Open Champ Values Patty Berg Connection

Defending U.S. Women’s Open champion Cristie Kerr, 30, was inspired by legendary Minneapolis golfer Patty Berg.  Kerr said earlier this week that Berg, who passed away in 2006, inspired her when she asked what it takes to make a champion. 

Berg told her “you have to bleed red, white and blue.”  The advice meant playing with superior effort and inspired Kerr to wear red, white and blue clothing last year on the final day of the Open at Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club in Southern Pines, North Carolina.   

Berg was the first U.S. Women’s champion, winning the title in 1946.  Now Kerr will be trying to repeat as champion in Berg’s home area.  The Open will be played June 23-29 at Interlachen Country Club in Edina. 

It will be a determined Kerr who takes to the course.  Last year not even a rain delay could stop her from going to the driving range where she worked on her game as lightening lit up the sky.  

Kerr said earlier this week she’s “peaking” as she approaches the championship here. “I feel like my game is at a point where I can win again…,” she said. 

In the next few weeks Kerr will work hard on her short game which she said has to be “phenomenal” to win the Open.  The Interlachen course has no flat greens and overall is considered a demanding but fair test for the golfers who will come here.

The course will be 6,789 yards, the longest yardage in Open history, with a score of 292 required to play par.  When Bobby Jones won the men’s U.S. Open in 1930 at Interlachen the total yardage was 6,672. 

“It’s going to be a great championship here at Interlachen,” Kerr said.

 

Cristie Kerr

Patty Berg

 

Maple Bats Drawing More Attention  

A development to watch in major league baseball is maple bats.  Fans and media have been talking about maple bats breaking during games.  Pointed projectiles pose a danger to players and fans. 

Commissioner Bud Selig said earlier this month he will be investigating whether maple bats are breaking more frequently than ash bats and if they pose a safety threat. There’s mixed opinion about what’s going on. 

In an article earlier this month, a California newspaper, the Modesto Bee, said maple bats are becoming a problem in all of professional baseball.  The newspaper’s Web site, www.modbee.com, said: “To put it simply, traditional ash bats crack. Maple bats explode, and over the last six years, maple has become the preferred wood of major league baseball. Just last year, it surpassed ash for the first time, according to MLB.com, and this season 60 percent of all major leaguers are swinging maple.” 

Maple bats are believed to have a harder hitting surface than the more traditional ash bats, but the view by many is that they break more frequently and explosively.  Earlier this year, for example, a Pittsburgh Pirates coach was struck in the face by a broken maple bat. 

Home run king Barry Bonds had success with maple bats and players are copy cats looking for their own edge.  “To me any advantage I could gain by the bat being a little harder, I need the help,” said Twins third baseman Mike Lamb who is a lifetime .278 hitter but is currently at .222.  “I need the help.  It probably isn’t even true. …But the perception for me anyway is that it helps.” 

Lamb, who has been using maple bats for the last several seasons, guessed that more Twins use maple rather than ash bats.  He said he doesn’t know if maple bats break more frequently but said “when barrels are big and handles are small, that doesn’t help either.” 

Conjecture about changes includes regulating thicker maple bat handles and even banning them.

 

Mike Lamb

 Maple bats are believed to have a harder hitting surface than the more traditional ash bats.

Worth Noting

Vikings coach Brad Childress returns to his high school in Aurora, Illinois to give the commencement address this weekend.  His theme will be the “journey” of life. 

Labor negotiations are going on with Star Tribune newsroom employees.  Don’t be surprised if salaries remain among the best in the country for daily newspaper reporters but the number of employees is cut. 

It was 20 years ago that the Minnesota North Stars, with the first pick in the NHL Entry Draft, chose Mike Modano.  He turns 38 next month and had an outstanding playoff with the Dallas Stars who lost in the Western Conference finals to Detroit.  Modano scored five goals and had seven assists in 18 games.  He owns a long list of North Stars/Stars records. 

Former Twins pitcher Frank Viola will be the manager of the Leesburg Lightning in the Florida Collegiate Summer League, according to my friend Dave Wright, senior editor at August Publications in Minneapolis.  This is a wooden bat league similar to the popular Northwoods League that includes teams from Minnesota.

The 2008 U.S. Women’s Open coming to Interlachen June 23-29 will be the 35^th USGA championship to take place in Minnesota.  California and Minnesota are the only two states to have hosted the 13 different USGA championships including the men’s and women’s U.S. Opens.

Ticket information is available at www.2008uswomensopen.com.  Kids 17 and under are admitted free with a ticketed adult.  An adult may bring up to nine children free of charge.

ESPN2 will have a preview show about the Open from 5 to 6 p.m. on June 25.   ESPN will provide coverage June 26 and 27, and NBC on June 28 and 29.

Former Gophers Lewis Garrison and Mark Smith are co-directors of football operations for a skills development camp that will be working with youth and high school age players. The camp begins June 16 and Garrison wrote in an e-mail that “to our knowledge this will be the first of its kind in this area.”  More information is available at www.bcsacademy.com/skills-development-camp.cfm.

For a fourth consecutive year, Winona State has won the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference (NSIC) All-Sports Award with 94 points, 15.5 points ahead of second-place Wayne State College.  Minnesota Duluth and Winona State are the only two schools to win the NSIC All-Sports Award in its nine year history.  Winona State won four titles during 2007-08, football, men’s basketball, men’s golf and women’s soccer. Coach Mike Leaf’s men’s basketball team participated in a third consecutive NCAA Division II national championship game, winning the 2006 and 2008 national championships.

For the 32nd consecutive season, Big Ten Conference men’s basketball programs led the nation in attendance, according to numbers released by the NCAA. The Big Ten ranked first among all conferences with an average of 12,978 fans per game/session, 838 more than the SEC at 12,140. The NCAA’s final attendance numbers and rankings include both regular season and conference tournament attendance. 

The Gophers averaged 12,987 fans per game during the regular season, the highest per game average since 1999-2000 (13,767).  Minnesota, in Tubby Smith’s first year as coach, averaged over 2,000 more fans per game last season than in 2006-07. 

The Big Ten had five schools among the country’s top 25 in average attendance, with two programs among the top 10.  No other conference placed more than four teams among the top 25.  Wisconsin led the Big Ten, ranking seventh nationally with an average of 17,190 fans per game.  Indiana finished No. 9 with a 16,876 average followed by No. 11 Illinois (16,618), No. 12 Ohio State (16,587) and No. 17 Michigan State (14,759).

 

Brad Childress

Mike Leaf

Tubby Smith